Green Living: Book Review of 'Second Skin' by India Flint

Gorgeous images inspire. And frankly, make me a little jealous!

If you're into making do and mending, living sustainably, or even just trying to thrift a bit and save money; if you're creative, love textiles, love beautiful imagery or just love a good, hearty coffee table book; if you're all or some of the above, then Second Skin by India Flint could be the title to add to your wishlist.
  

"Almost from the moment of our birth we are wrapped in textiles of one form or another..."

While India's book at first glance looks like a beautifully rendered reflection of her values, philosophies and thoughts about her place on the planet, it is also surprisingly choc-a-bloc full of hints, tips, tutorials, patterns and suggestions of how you can get more out of your clothes and textiles.

So I was torn between settling down with a cup of tea and doing some gentle Sunday reading, and my usual frenetic gobbling up of a craft book, which involves leaping up in a frenzy of inspiration to start on something before I've even finished the book, or indeed, read the instructions.

We all love a how-to! Good little graphics inspire you to rummage in your wardrobe

For example, a whole chapter is dedicated to repurposing your clothes, including such quirky and inspirational ideas as:

• Working out what will suit you by making a paper doll of yourself and playing with clothes shapes to work out what suits you;
• Dividing your wardrobe into Keepers, Tweakers, Throwers, Swappers, and Rippers
• A host of re-purposing ideas and talk-throughs such as:
• Over-dyeing stained clothes
• A short skirt into a shopping bag
• Jeans into a picnic bag
• Jumpers into cushions
• Turning two jumpers and an old silk shirt into a long cardigan
• Making a pinafore from an old skirt

Added to these lovely practical how-to's, are a gallery of wonderful images from inspirational textiles artists and refashioning gurus, and lovely pictures of India's dyeing projects.  She also gives you the no-nonsense, undeniable facts about some of the abominable environmental crises the fashion industry is responsible for; a good reason we should all change our thinking, and our actions, when it comes to the clothes we wear, a fact India sums up with a quote from fashion writer Lou Pardi:

"Modern production of clothing is an environmental and social disaster"

The book is beautifully written - full of whimsy and nostalgia, as well as practical and down-to-earth information on fibres, fabrics, washing notes, dyeing clothes and looking after them.  I was delighted to see that the index, a benchmark of a publication truly valued by its publishers but often a victim of cost-cutting, is refreshingly good, at 6 pages long.  It did well in some nasty tests I applied to it - I looked for English words such as 'jumper' to test its suitability for the UK market, and some vague terms like 'chemicals' and 'recycling' to test depth, and it didn't disappoint - it reflects the wealth of information and detail in India's work.

The book is graphically attractive, the colours natural

This is a book from a person for whom textiles is as intimately a part of her life as her skin is; Second Skin is a lovely expression of India's belief that we should all take care in what we put next to our, and our families', bodies.

I love this book - it is a treasure that I dip into when I have a quiet moment.  I hope you will love it too.

You can see what other lovelies Murdoch Books have in their stash too.  I follow Murdoch on twitter at @MurdochBookUK ; and of course you can follow our twitterings at @OriginalStitch  But don't blame me when you drool over Murdoch's library and find your wallet accidentally relieved of cash, ok?

Images taken from Second Skin by India Flint, published by Murdoch Books

Make a Dolly Sling: the OriginalStitch Dolly Sling Sewing Pattern

Yes. That is a grown woman modelling it...!

Phew, we've been getting down and dirty with our Dolly Sling redesign.  We've tweaked and preened and primped a coupla things; they're much better designed now.

And it's all yours!  Click here to buy the PDF pattern download.

Aw, the Dolly Sling - it's just one of our all-time favourite products - it has a lovely cute shape, the size is just right for fitting in lots of different shaped and size toys and dolls, and it even fits some well-known toys such as Build-a-Bear and Born Again dolls.

So if you're looking for a really unusual gift to make, this one definitely has wow factor.

Why OriginalStitch Patterns?  Let me tell you...

1) No Wordy Cutting Lists!
Don't know about you, but honestly I find written lists tricky - I'm a very visual person, so I mean no offense at all to patterns which use them, but I likes pictures.  So we always use cutting list images - you can see literally every single piece you're going to need.

2) Consistently Named Pieces
When you sew from a pattern, you start off with lots of pieces, and halfway through you have half-constructed bits....now I can get confused in patterns when there's no 'halfway house' names; patterns often state "Now take this piece" or worse, omit the noun entirely - "Turn over and stitch along sides"  Um...turn which bit over? The bit I've just done or the thing I had to do before that?!!
We always make sure that once a construction is completed, we tell you what it will now be called, and when it comes up again in the pattern, that's how we refer to it.  Sounds basic - helps in the long run!

3) Integrated Seam Allowances
When you cut out our patterns, you won't be expected to add seam allowances.  I know this can in some cases be necessary, especially in the world of dressmaking, but we tell you every step of the way what seam allowance you'll need to stitch.  It's almost always the same throughout the pattern, but even so, you will always be told what it is.

4) A Besquillion Diagrams

It's one of my very favourite jobs here at OriginalStitch, so maybe that's why we have so many of them, but we use looooooads of diagrams in our sewing patterns.  I draw them myself, having designed the product myself or stood over Amanda while she makes it, so they are straight from the very horse's mouth - I draw them from the exact construction at that very point, so if there's still pins there, I draw them; if there's loose threads hanging down, I draw them.  We then have our lovely designer Jon colour 'em in all pretty so they're even easier to understand, and have shading where there would be some, and right and wrong sides of the fabric properly coloured.  Lovely.  If you're terribly clever, you can probably almost make something without even reading, which is what my mother does.

"What seam allowance am I using?" she said once.
"It says it right there look Mum - quarter of an inch, see?"
"Oh I haven't read the pattern, I'm just using the pictures." she said.

5) No Template Enlargement

When you cut out our templates, you won't have to enlarge them.  I'm quite happy to admit this may be a matter of preference, but I try to think of the person sewing from their abode up the top of a Welsh mountain, with no access to a photocopier shop, and as temperamental an all-in-one printer as we have (shh, don't tell it I said that, it's easily upset...).  So our templates are designed to fit on an A4 sheet, so that when you print them out, they're real-size.  You may have to join pieces together to make the whole template before applying to the fabric, yes - but we make this as easy as possible by including full written instructions and using nice little symbols.

6) They're available immediately!
Our patterns are currently PDF downloads, to which there is a link in your confirmation email, once you've purchased your Sewing Pattern PDF from the website.  We have chosen this method because of our eco ethics - we felt it was a little cheeky to go printing out reams of paper for our sewing patterns when we bang on about environmental concerns.

Having said that, we'd be interested to know if you would like them as a paper version, because we would seek to work with some lovely bonkers paper made from rhino poo, or beer dregs, or old Barbie packaging or something.   (We ain't joking, our tags ARE made from old beer dregs!)

7) Online Support
You can get support when making your pattern from our Facebook Page - just come and holler at our wall!  One of us will come and join in the discussion.  Of course you can always email us directly too.

 So, if you haven't taken a peek at our sewing patterns yet, have a little look.

Which of our products would you like to see a Sewing Pattern PDF for next?

7 Reasons to buy our Sewing Patterns

We love our Sewing Patterns, and we're simperingly proud of them.  Shall I tells you for why?  Shall I?  Hm?

We've been doing lots of nice PR things lately, and people often ask what it is about our Sewing Patterns that makes them different, or special or easy or unique; and being a little slow on the uptake, it only occurred to me after the fifth person asked this, that I ought really to have answered this question already.

Like, duh...

Both Amanda and I have followed many, many sewing patterns in our time.  Some difficult, some head-bangingly impossible to follow, some wonderfully simple, some kinda in the middle, ish, somewhere.  Some nearly made me cry.  Some were joyous.  So it was from our experience as beginner users that our Patterns were born, and for this reason we have always fiercely defended the 'beginner' nature of them, in that easy patterns are nice for everyone, not just beginners.  My mother is an extremely experienced dressmaker (she made both me and my sisters' wedding dresses) but I can remember her frustration at the pattern she was using - it was tortuously written and omitted enormous chunks of information.  She found herself groping her way blind through vast tranches of tulle, netting, interlinings, stiffenings and other masses of froo in order to figure things out.  It wasn't pretty.  And the swearing was a little colourful.  And I nearly always came out the worse for it because I then had pins stuck in me during fittings.

Anyhoo, armed with all this history, here are the things we love about our patterns, and which we guarantee you'll get in each and every one.

1) No Wordy Cutting Lists!
Don't know about you, but honestly I find written lists tricky - I'm a very visual person, so I mean no offence at all to patterns which use them, but I likes pictures.  So we always use cutting list images - you can see literally every single piece you're going to need.

2) Consistently Named Pieces
When you sew from a pattern, you start off with lots of pieces, and halfway through you have half-constructed bits....I often got confused in patterns because there didn't seem to be the halfway house names; patterns often stated "Now take this piece" or worse, omitted the noun entirely - "Turn over and stitch along sides"  Turn which bit over? The bit I've just done or the thing I had to do before that?!!
We always make sure that once a construction is completed, we tell you what it will now be called, and when it comes up again in the pattern, that's how we refer to it.  Sounds basic - helps in the long run!

3) Integrated Seam Allowances
When you cut out our patterns, you won't be expected to add seam allowances.  I know this can in some cases be necessary, expecially in the world of dressmaking, but we tell you every step of the way what seam allowance you'll need.  It's almost always the same throughout the pattern, but even so, you will always be told what it is.

4) A Besquillion Diagrams

It's one of my very favourite jobs here at OriginalStitch, so maybe that's why we have so many of them, but we use looooooads of diagrams in our sewing patterns.  Don't know about you, but it is just so very much easier.  I draw them myself, when I have designed the product myself or stood over Amanda while she makes it, so they are straight from the very horse's mouth - I have drawn them from the exact construction at that very point, so if there's still pins there, I draw them; if there's loose threads hanging down, I draw them.  We then have our lovely designer Jon colour 'em in all pretty so they're even easier to understand, and have shading where there would be some, and right and wrong sides of the fabric properly coloured.  Lovely.  If you're terribly clever, you can probably almost make something without even reading, which is what my mother does.

"What seam allowance am I using?" she said once.
"It says it right there look Mum - quarter of an inch, see?"
"Oh I haven't read the pattern, I'm just using the pictures." she said.

5) No Template Enlargement

When you cut out our templates, you won't have to enlarge them.  I'm quite happy to admit this may be a matter of preference, but I try to think of the person sewing from their abode up the top of a Welsh mountain, with no access to a photocopier shop, and as temperamental an all-in-one printer as we have (shh, don't tell it I said that, it's easily upset...).  So our templates are designed to fit on an A4 sheet, so that when you print it out, it is real-size.  You may have to join pieces together to make the whole template before applying to the fabric, yes - but we make this as easy as possible by including full written instructions and using nice little symbols.

6) They're available immediately!
Our patterns are currently PDF downloads, which you can access right there in your purchase email, once you've been to the website and bought one.  We have chosen this method because of our eco ethics - we felt it was a little cheeky to go printing out reams of paper for our sewing patterns when we bang on about environmental concerns.
Having said that, we'd be interested to know if you would like them as a paper version, because we would seek to work with some lovely bonkers paper made from rhino poo, or beer dregs, or old Barbie packaging or something.   (We ain't joking, our tags ARE made from old beer dregs!

7) Online Support
You can get support when making your pattern from our OriginalStitch Cafe- it's where all the manuals and manufacturing information is housed for our stitchers to access, so it's where we put information relating to the sewing patterns.  Come and join, and any help shouts you put out we'll pick up - either myself, or Amanda, or even one of our lovely stitchers will soon come to your aid!

So, if you haven't taken a peek at our sewing patterns yet, have a little look - we're working on a whole raft of our Piece & Jam Collection items next, so we'd love to know - what would you most like to see next in our range of Sewing Patterns?

Life's Just Better With Jam

Of course, it's taken me so long, their feet no longer fit.  Ahem.

We discover, Dormouse Moneybags and me, that all of a sudden a half-term or an Easter or a Christmas holidays is slap bang sitting right on top of us.  Wham!  Just like that.  We're all, what the, how the, where the heck did the time go?  Are our children ever in school?

I like how it looks as if they've signed their feet...

And in those weeks of course there's little point trying to do anything involving the following high falutin' thinky activities - planning, strategy, website editing, product design, image editing.
You know, just the stuff in our jobs.  No way.  Forget it.  And certainly not making products for our lovely (we're curtsying right now, curtsying) customers, who deserve only the highest quality products we can muster.

Add one gorgeous bright red giant bathmat!

But we're addicted to sewing, so we do both attack little projects for our own home, since it doesn't remotely matter if we cock those up.  Yes, I like to make a right old scruffbag of a thing for my gaff.  I don't care about loose threads, scruffy edges, double-stitching, linings, neat hems, market trends, on-trend colourways or nuffink.  No, I just grab some scraps, cut 'em up, hoop up, throw a sausage at the kids, stitch something to something else, lob some squash at the kids, stitch some more bits to some other bits, cut, snip, stitch, say "Yeeees!" to whatever thing they've just asked for (crisps was it? Tequila? Tree-climbing? Fire-starting? No idea, just can't stop in the middle of machine-embroidery), stitch a bit more, pinking shear some edges, bob's your uncle and here's a bowl of ice-cream with chocolate sauce and yes, of course, help yourself to too much telly.

Enter me for Mother of the Year Award, you say?  Oh yes please, do, do.

Machine-embroidered scraps for a picnic blanket

Anyway, so here are the things I'd been meaning to make for donkeys' years, and scruffy though they are, I'm glad I've done them.  They are the very things I love - they inject creativity into the fabric of this house.  They are there to please no-one but me (and if they please other people, hooorah!); they are spontaneous; vintage; sustainable; re-used; and best of all, being used, so I get to have a little cock-eyed smile at them each time I see them.  Slightly smug.  You know that smile.
I must tell you that the bathmat idea is not mine, no - I saw it in passing at a nice blog once, and always meant to do it.  You can find a smashing tute for it here if you're not confident about tackling it freestyleeee....

The picnic blanket idea has been germinating for a while in my bonce.

 

These are all machine-embroidered squares with daft phrases on them, like our Piece & Jam Collection.  Ok, it's going to take me a while, but once I've done 12 or so, I'll throw them together with some other squares to make a picnic blanket - whack an old shower curtain on the back and hey presto, all ready for an English picnic, for which waterproofing is always advisable. A load of foody phrases, coz life is just better with Jam.

Whose voice can you hear now?  Yep.  That's right.  Homer Simpson.

Yes, that is Eddie Izzard, most beloved of this Isle.  There'll be a few more of his by the time this picnic has finished.  Cake or death?

So, now then - I'd like to know any of the following in your comments please...either here or on our Facebook page....

a) What did you make in the holidays, and on a scale of 1-10, how scruffy was it?
b) What were your most shameful hands-off childcare tactics?  Share.  Seriously - I need some tips!
c) More Eddie Izzard phrases for the picnic blanket please.  And by the way, these are for everyone - please make a picnic blanket using them!  Could you pass me the idioms please.  Thank you.

Grubby Buggy Revamp Sewing Pattern!

Hoorahhhh!  Well, that'll teach us to make silly bets with ourselves.  And publish them.  A couple of weeks ago I said this outlandish thing on the OriginalStitch Facebook page

Well. The web goblins' famous techno spider-bot crawled across it in their evil cyberspacian way and thought to teach me a lesson - unleashing some lovely webby glitches on my Powers of Uploading and Launching A Product.  So instead of taking my planned one and a half hours to achieve, it took more like one and a half weeks.  Ahem.

Two kids? Two buggy seats!

Anyhoo, you'll all be delighted to know it is now available!

There's a nice little history behind this being our next launch. We ran a lovely competition with the super duper (big cheer please) The Sewing Directory, to get the sewists and stitchers out there to help us decide which of our products we should launch the Sewing Pattern for next.  The winning product was the Buggy Seat, and the winner picked out of a hat was Anna West, who received a ready-made version made by none other than me me me lil' ole me, and the sewing pattern itself, which will shortly be winging its way to her.
She sent us a lovely Tweet to say...

"The buggy seat arrived safely yesterday; my daughter loves it! She can't believe it's reversible, all her dollies are taking turns in it!"

Lovely full-colour sketches

Aww, we like it when you feel the OriginalStitch luuuuurve.  And, just to help everyone feeled all loved and special, we also included a 25% discount for Sewing Directory users so they could buy this and any other patterns they like from our selection.

No wordy cutting lists here!

For your discount, just head on over to The Sewing Directory's Facebook page where you should find a status update, or have a read of the lovely interview they did with us.  You'll find details of the discount there.  If you do use the discount, don't forget to make sure you've Liked their page on Facebook, or that you follow on Twitter!  Go and say hi, and make sure you bookmark the website.  It's a wealth of information on sewing courses, supplies, and articles.  Plus it has fantastic competitions like the one we did with them, every week (I've been a loyal follower for yonks, and I have to tell you, I've won quite a few prizes!)


Anyway, we hope you enjoy the Buggy Seat Sewing Pattern - like all our Sewing Patterns, it's packed full of easy-to-follow instructions, with a pictorial list of the pieces you'll need (we like to steer clear of wordy cutting lists), and lots of lovely little sketches to help you make the Buggy Seat without confusion.  This is a super pattern; to quote our stitcher Jennie - this is great for 'pimping up your kid's ride'!  Plus, what a fab idea for a gift, eh?!  If We Do Say So Ourselves.  Seriously, I mean, EVERYONE's got one of those grubby old buggies lying about!


Ooh, and why not come and join the OriginalStitch Cafe? That way if you do get stuck, you can just shout, and someone will be right along to help you get your wrong sides on the right side.